Preacher (15 page)

Six boats of American volunteers, one of them carrying as many as one hundred men, put ashore just south of Natchez. There, the officers of the various units met and organized themselves into a regiment, electing from among their own number the regimental, battalion, and company commanders.

Captain Harding had left St. Louis with twenty-eight men. He'd picked up five men in Cape Girardeau, including Lieutenant Garrison. At the Birds Point bivouac ten days ago, he'd lost nine men to the Indians, including Lieutenant Garrison. He arrived at Natchez with only twenty-one. His was the smallest individual unit present, but despite that, he was elected to the rank of major, and given command of a battalion of one hundred. Additional officers were elected from within the ranks of the battalion to become company commanders. Sergeant Delacroix was one who was elected, becoming a captain and assuming command of Harding's original group. Art was promoted to sergeant, while Cooper and Monroe were both promoted to the rank of corporal.

* * *

After the election, Major Harding called for a meeting of all his officers and sergeants in order to organize. Once the organization was complete, he dismissed them, though he asked Art to stay behind for a moment.

“I want to thank you for agreeing to be a sergeant,” he said.

“I must confess, Major, I feel a little foolish ordering men around who are much older than I am,” Art said.

“Art, you are a boy in years, that's true. But you are the equal to any man I've ever met in worth,” Harding said.

“Thank you, sir,” Art said. “It's gratifying to have your approval.”

“Not only my approval. You have earned the respect of every man in your company.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Art asked, “What's it like? Being in a battle? I mean a real battle, against soldiers and such. Not the little fight we had with the Shawnee.”

“Don't know as I can answer that for you,” Harding replied. “Seein' as I've never been in that kind of battle myself. But I reckon you'll do just fine.”

“I hear everyone talking and bragging. Some of 'em can't wait to kill an Englishman.”

“And what about you?”

“I don't feel that way,” Art said. “I mean, I'll do what I have to do, but I can't say as I'm lookin' forward to killing anyone.”

“That's because you've already had to do it,” Harding said. “And you know it's something you do only when it absolutely has to be done. It's for sure not somethin' a body takes pleasure from doin'.”

“I guess that's it,” Art said. “When it comes to it, I reckon I'll do my share of killin' along with everyone else. But I don't aim to brag about it, before or after.”

As they talked, Art looked around the camp. Earlier in the day the bivouac area had been alive with movement and sound, as necessary camp activities were performed and drilling and instruction continued. But it was completely dark now. More than five hundred men had crawled into their shelters, or gone to ground, and those who were still active could be seen only in silhouette against the orange, flickering glows of the many campfires. It was quiet also, except for the hushed whisper of the flowing river and a few subdued conversations.

“How is it that you were able to change so, Art?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“How'd you go from bein' a boy, not even able to take care of himself, to what you are now?”

“I had no choice, Major. I've been on my own all this time, so it was a matter of survive or die.”

“I can see how that would make a man of you,” Harding said. “But I am curious about one thing. Why did you enlist?”

Art chuckled. “I was loading and unloading freight wagons,” he said. “I figured it was time to move on, and this seemed as good a way as any. If you don't mind my asking, why are you here? What made you give up your boat for this?”

Harding reached down into his own knapsack, then pulled out a pipe. He began filling the bowl with tobacco.

“You been following this war any?”

“No, sir, I have not.”

“Not a lot of folks have,” Harding said. “You would be amazed at how many people there are in this country who don't even know that we are at war with England.”

“Why are we at war with them?”

“To be honest with you, I'm not sure I know why the country is at war. I know why I am.”

Harding told about the fight on the Ohio River where Indians, aided by British artillery, had killed all his friends.

“I made a vow then and there to fight against them,” he said. “So when I ran across Ole' Hickory, I joined up.”

“Ole' Hickory?”

Harding chuckled. “That's what a lot of folks call General Andy Jackson.”

“You think we'll win this war?”

“We've got to,” Harding said resolutely. “If the English win, they'll be takin' over all the land west of the Mississippi River. There's a lot of land out there, and I plan to see it someday. And when I do see it, I want it to be American land I'm seein'.”

“How much land do you reckon there is out there?” Art asked.

“You heard of Lewis and Clark, haven't you?”

“Aren't they the fellas that traveled all the way out to the western sea?”

Harding nodded. “The Pacific Ocean,” he said. “Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri as far as they could, then struck out on foot. And according to them, there's a whole lot more land that hasn't even been looked at than we've already got. Land that goes on as far as a body can see, and then, when you get there, it goes on again, for day after day after day.”

“And there is nobody out there?” Art asked.

“Nobody out there but Indians,” Harding answered. “And not that many of them, I'm told. Nothing but bears and beaver, game and fish, trees and mountains.”

Art's eyes sparkled in excitement. “Oh, now, wouldn't that be something to behold?”

Harding chuckled. “You've got that 'see the creature' look about you.”

“If ‘the creature' is out there in all that land you're talking about, then I reckon I do want to see it,” Art admitted. “In fact, soon as this little fracas is over down in New Orleans, I reckon I'll just go on out there and take me a look.”

“There's more to it than just going out there to take a look, son,” Harding said. “There's mountains that touch the sky, deserts as big as seas, and who knows what else. It's going to be more than just a mite dangerous.”

“The more you talk about it, the more interesting it sounds,” Art said.

Harding laughed. “I thought you'd probably say something like that. What would you say if I told you I had the exact same idea in mind? How would you like for the two of us to go out there together?”

“You want to go too?”

“Sure. I told you a long time ago, I'm as eager to see the creature as you are.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the river. “I've been up and down Old Strong near on to forty or fifty times I figure. There are no creatures hereabout that I haven't seen. I'd love to go west, at least as far as the mountains, maybe even all the way to the Pacific Ocean. What do you say? Shall we go take a look?”

“Yes!” Art replied. “Yes, I'd love that!”

* * *

The regiment to which Art now belonged was assigned to Brigadier General Humbolt's Louisiana Volunteers.

“Hey, who is this Humbolt fella?” Private Monroe asked. “I come down here to fight with General Andy Jackson . . . Ole' Hickory hisself.”

“You will be fighting for General Jackson,” Delacroix told him.

“That ain't what the major just told us. He said we was now a part of General Humbolt's Division.”

“And Humbolt's Division is a part of General Jackson's Army,” Delacroix explained patiently. He looked at the others. “Men, do yourselves and your country proud. We've been assigned to the middle of the line.”

“What's that mean?” someone asked.

“It means we're a'goin' to be right in the thick of all the fightin',” another explained.

With that comment, Harding's Legion came to the realization that the drill and practice and bragging and anticipation were all over. There was no more talk of what they were going to do, it was now a matter of doing it.

General Jackson put his Army into position along the banks of the Rodriguez Canal. There, he built a fortified mud rampart, just over half a mile long, anchored on the right by the Mississippi River and on the left by an impassable cypress swamp. That meant there was no way the British troops could reach New Orleans without coming right through Jackson's Army.

Jackson's Army was a polyglot force consisting of units of the regular army as well as New Orleans militia, free blacks, frontiersmen such as Harding's Legion, and even a band of outlaws and pirates led by Jean Lafitte.

The British Army they were facing was one of the finest military assemblages in the world. It was led by General Sir Edward Parkenham, the thirty-seven-year-old brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington. Parkenham, a much-decorated officer, was commanding a force of tough, proven British Regulars: the 4th, 21st, 44th, and 93rd Highlanders. These were the same regiments that had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, and more recently burned the Capitol in Washington. This magnificent Army was augmented by the 95th and 5th West India Regiments.

On the 28th of December, Parkenham launched a strong advance against the Americans, but was repulsed. On New Year's Day Parkenham moved his artillery into position, then started a day-long artillery barrage. As the British guns opened fire, the sound of thunder rolled across the open field. Immediately thereafter, the shells came crashing in, exploding in rosy plumes of fire, smoke, and whistling death.

Although some of the regulars in Jackson's Army had undergone an artillery barrage before, this was a new and terrifying experience for most of the men. They shuddered in fear as heavy balls crashed into the cotton bale barricades behind which the American soldiers were taking shelter. Explosive shells burst inside their ranks, sending out singing pieces of shrapnel.

It was in this bombardment that Harding's Legion suffered its first casualty. Corporal Mitchell, the man who had worried so about making sure his wife got his enlistment bonus, was decapitated by one of the cannonballs. The sight of one of their own, alive and vibrant one moment and headless the next, unnerved many of the men, and some would have fled had their officers not stopped them.

Art remembered the touching scene on the riverbank between Cooper and his wife, just before they left St. Louis. He thought of Mrs. Mitchell and felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow for her loss.

In the chilled, predawn January darkness, American sentries and listening posts realized that something was afoot. After several days of relative quiet, they picked up a great deal of movement over on the British side. Art and the others were rousted from their bedrolls and moved quickly to the barricades. There, Harding's Legion took up its assigned position, right in the center of the line. Looking down along each side of him, Art could see the other defenders, holding their rifles and shivering in the cold, though he suspected perhaps many were shivering from fear as well.

Surprisingly, he felt no particular fear, and this allowed him to be a dispassionate observer. And what he saw was four thousand Americans, facing a British force that was nearly twice their number.

Gradually, the sky grew lighter, but an exceptionally thick fog rolled in so that, even with the coming of dawn, the Americans still couldn't see the British troops. They could hear them, though, and they listened with quickened souls as the English officers called out their commands.

The order, repeated many times, was followed by the unmistakable clicking sound of bayonets being attached to the ends of the long British “Brown Bess” rifles. The rifles were so long that when the bayonets were affixed they were almost like pikes, and in the hands of trained soldiers, they made quite a formidable weapon.

Shortly after that, the Americans faced a new terror. The British began their attack with a broadside of rockets. Art had never seen anything like it before. He watched with as much fascination as fear: seeing first the flare of their launch, gleaming even through the morning mist, then the glare of their transit, and finally the projectiles themselves as they emerged, spitting fire, from the fog to explode over the heads of the Americans.

After the barrage, there followed several moments of silence. In its own way, the silence was as frightening as the whoosh and explosions of the rockets had been. Then, quietly at first, but gradually increasing in volume, they heard from the fog the muffled-jangle of equipment and the rhythmic drumming of feet. The sound grew louder, and louder still, until it was a drumming that resonated in the pounding of each waiting American's pulse.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Suddenly there came a sound that, to some, was like the wailing of demons from hell. It was the high-pitched, haunting squeal of the bagpipes. As the noises grew louder and louder from the fog, a nervousness began to ripple up and down the American lines, and some of the soldiers began shift about anxiously. They looked back over their shoulders several times, as if searching out the most desirable escape route. Harding noticed the unease among his troops.

“Easy, men. Easy,” he said, speaking calmly. “Stand your ground now.”

By now the noise of drumming feet and wailing bagpipes was nearly deafening.

“Come on!” one of the soldiers suddenly shouted. “What are you waiting for? Don't stay out there in the fog making noises!” He climbed to the top of the barricade, and would have run toward the unseen enemy if a couple of his friends hadn't grabbed him and pulled him back down.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Art stared into the thick mist, straining to see. For several long moments there was nothing. Then, as if apparitions were suddenly and mysteriously forming in the mist, the British Army materialized. Art saw the magnificent but intimidating sight of beautifully uniformed and well-trained soldiers in a disciplined battle-line-front formation. Their bayonets were fixed and the rifles were thrust forward.

Not until this very moment could the Americans do anything more than wait. Relieved that the opportunity for some action was here at last, Harding shouted out his orders at the top of his voice.

“Count off,” Harding instructed, and the men responded.

“One!”

“Two!”

“One!”

“Two!”

They shouted throaty responses until the entire battalion was counted off.

Those who were number one would kneel and fire the first volley. Then number two would fire while number one reloaded.

“Major, we got to get outta here!” Private Monroe said. “They's more'n twice as many of them as they is of us. And with this dampness and all, it ain't all that certain our powder will explode!”

“Stay where you are,” Harding said calmly. “Their powder is going to be just as wet.”

“Yes, but they's a lot more of them than they is of us, and they got bayonets. We're crazy to stay here like this,” Monroe insisted.

“Take it easy, Monroe,” Art said.

“I don't need no wet-behind-the-ear, snot-nosed boy to tell me to take it easy,” Monroe said derisively, glowering at Art.

“At least Sergeant Gregory ain't cryin' and peein' in his pants,” one of the other soldiers said. “Now shut up and keep watchin' out for the British, or keep on a'yappin' and start watchin' out for me.”

The last comment had the desired effect, and though Monroe was still twitching nervously, he was no longer talking about it.

“Hold your fire, men, hold your fire,” Harding instructed. “Don't fire until you can clearly see their belt buckles.”

The British advanced to a distance of about forty yards. At that point they halted. Then their officers' commands, loud, clear, and confident, floated across the misty distance between the two forces so that the Americans could hear the orders as well as the British soldiers for whom the orders were intended.

“Extend front!”

As if on parade, the British line extend out, fingertip to fingertip, eyeing up and down the rank in order to be properly aligned.

The officers stepped in and out of the rank, checking the alignment, here ordering one soldier to move up a step, there ordering another one to back up a bit. Only when the line was perfectly formed did the officers return to their position forward of the troops. The officers drew their sabers and held them up.

General Parkenham gave his order in a loud, clear voice.

“Forward at a double!”

The entire British line began running toward the ramparts, their bayonet-tipped rifles thrust forward. The officers ran before them, brandishing their swords.

This was a bayonet charge being made by battle-hardened and well-disciplined soldiers. Harding's Legion, as indeed most of the others of Jackson's Army, consisted of militiamen, many seeing battle for the first time. They fought back the bile of fear that rose in their throats, and they waited.

Art aimed at one of the soldiers. He held the aim for a long moment, awaiting the order to fire. Then, capriciously, he shifted his aim to another soldier, sparing, for no particular reason, the first soldier.

Not until the British were at point-blank range did Harding give the command to his battalion.

“Fire!”

Winks of light rippled up and down the American line as first the firing pans, and then the muzzle blasts, flashed brightly. Smoke billowed out in one large, rolling cloud as the sound of gunfire rolled across the plain. Art saw his man go down.

The effect of the opening volley was devastating. In addition to the soldier Art shot, almost half of the British front rank went down under the torrent of lead. The second volley did as much damage as the first, so that when the huge cloud of gun smoke cleared away, there was nothing before the Americans but a field strewn with dead or dying British soldiers.

The British Army was stopped in its tracks, almost as if they had run into a stone wall. A few of the British soldiers fired their weapons toward the Americans, but the volume of their fire was pitifully small.

“Lord, Major, did you see that?” Delacroix asked excitedly. Delacroix was from the regular Army, and one of the few American defenders who had actually been in battle before. “We cut them down like so much wheat. They never had a ch ...”

Delacroix stopped in midsentence when he saw that Major Harding couldn't hear him. Although the firing coming from the British lines had been weak and, for the most part, ineffective, at least one bullet had found its mark. Harding was lying on his back, dead, from a wound in his forehead.

Art saw him at the same time, and he dropped to one knee beside him.

“Major Harding!” Art said.

Delacroix, looking down at the boy and the major, shook his head sadly.

“There's nothing you can do for him now, son,” Delacroix said.

Reaching down, Art closed Harding's eyes.

“Are you going to be all right?” Delacroix asked.

“Yes, sir,” Art answered.

“Good man. Better get back in line, looks like they're comin' again.”

Once more the English came across the field, though this time without benefit of pipe or drum, for fully ninety percent of the Highlanders, to include every piper and drummer, had been killed in the previous charges.

No longer an impressive front of redcoats and extended rifles, this was a ragged line of the desperate, brave, and foolish. The mighty yell of defiance that had issued from the throats of the attackers in the first wave was now a weak and disjointed cry from a few scattered men.

Again, the Americans fired, the volley as intense with this barrage as it had been the first time. British soldiers clutched breasts, stomachs, arms, and legs as blood seeped through their spread fingers.

Again, the line stopped, staggered, then turned and retreated back across the field.

All save one.

A single British lieutenant, screaming in rage and slashing at the air with his sword, continued toward the American ramparts even though every other man of the British Army was in retreat.

“Follow me, men, follow me!” the lieutenant shouted. Though he was now the sole target and could have easily been killed, the American defenders withheld fire, watching in morbid fascination as he used the bodies of his own dead to give him a foothold to the top of the rampart wall.

“Put them to the bayonet!” the lieutenant shouted, leaping down into the Americans, slashing out with his sword.

The Americans backed away from the sword, but not one made an effort to harm the lieutenant. Instead, everyone looked at him in awe.

Noticing his strange reception among the enemy, the British officer stopped screaming and lowered his sword. He looked behind him and, only then, realized that he and he alone had breached the rampart wall. He lowered his sword.

“Let's hear it for the lad!” someone shouted.

“Hip, hip!”

“Hooray!”

“Hip, hip!”

“Hooray!”

Half-a-dozen Americans moved toward the lieutenant. One of them took his sword, and to the young officer's surprise, they lifted him to their shoulders.

“Here's the bravest lad on the field today!” one of the Americans yelled, and once again, the Englishman was honored with cheers as he was borne on the shoulders of the men who, but moments earlier, had been his mortal enemy.

The British were unable to launch another attack because their commander, General Sir Edward Parkenham, had been killed by a bursting cannon shell. With his dying breath, Parkenham had ordered his successor to continue to press the attack. Wisely, however, the new commander had disobeyed, pulling the survivors off the bloodied field and leaving behind over two thousand of his men dead or wounded.

* * *

Only eight Americans were killed in the battle, and while most celebrated their great victory, Art could feel only sorrow over the loss of his friend, Major Harding. Harding and the other Americans who were killed were taken back to New Orleans, where they were given a military burial.

General Jackson attended the funeral, then sent word that he would like to talk to Art.

“Me?” Art asked when Delacroix took him the message. “Are you sure the general said he wanted to talk to me?”

“That's what he said.”

“Why on earth would he want to talk to me?”

Delacroix shook his head. “I can't answer that question,” he said. “But then, I learned a long time ago that you can't never figure out what a general has on his mind. Whatever it is, I expect you had better go see him. Generals ain't the kind of folks you want to keep waiting.”

“Yes, sir,” Art said.

“Here. Before you go, you ought to have this,” Delacroix said, reaching out his hand. He was holding something.

“What is that?”

“It's a shoulder epaulet. Put this on your left shoulder.”

“Only officers wear those.”

“You are an officer,” Delacroix said. “You was just made a second lieutenant.”

Art held up his hand in refusal. “Captain, I expect you should give that to someone else, someone who earned it. Now that the battle is done and the danger over, I hear General Jackson is going to let everyone out who wants out. And I want out.”

Delacroix snorted a half laugh. “Hell, boy, it probably ain't official. I'm not sure anyone as young as you can even be an officer. But far as I'm concerned, you earned this rank, and even if you take your discharge tomorrow, I figure you got the right to wear it for as long as you got left. I don't mind admittin' that I was wrong about you. When I first seen you back in St. Louis, I thought you was just some worrisome kid. But you sure changed my mind.”

Hesitantly, Art took the epaulet. “I hope this doesn't cause any trouble with the other men.”

“How do you think you got that?” he asked. “The other men elected you. Every one of them. Including, even, Corporal Monroe. Of course, part of it might be because as soon as you agree to take it, Monroe becomes a sergeant,” Delacroix said, laughing.